Body stops, eyes open, and I see Michael sitting on the couch watching me. Apparently I look funny. He wants to know what I’m thinking about so hard. So I share the assignment and my problem. He shares some insight that really gets me started and I’m off . . . racing toward the notebook and jotting down thoughts, visions, questions, and faces that come to mind.

The assignment was to think about people you admire, why you admire them, are you like them, are they opposite of you, or are you striving to be like them.

I had a few people in my mind. I could actually see their faces, but I couldn’t figure out why. Why did these come to mind? There are multitudes of people I admire, but these were stuck in the foreground and would not budge. It was Michael’s observation that pulled it all together for me. He instincitvely saw the pattern that I was struggling to grasp.

Here are the things my list have in common:

Their lives revolve around their values (principles).
They show strength and courage to sacrifice (life, reputation, monetary gain) for those values.
They show grace and mercy to love those who belittle (persecute, hurt) them for those values.
My list is a funny hodge-podge, but now that I see the commonalities, it makes perfect sense. Some of the people are real, some are characters. Some I know a lot about, and some I am still learning from and about. Some are the point, some are the counterpoint.

Together they paint a portrait of who I want to be “when I grow up.”

So who was on my list:

Jeus: Perfection come down to live among us as one of us. Love, grace, mercy, meekness (the old definition), kindness, but strength — such strength.

Jimmy Carter: A new hero for me. He was much disparaged as I grew up, but I’ve been reading his writing and finding values, truth, grace, focus, and again strength — mighty strength.

and then came 2 characters: Sidney Bristow and Hector of Troy: loyalty and honesty. Physically: protective, willingness to die, and standing up for the right side (even when it wasn’t the winning side). They are physcial representations of the values I see in the others. They mash it out in the “real world” in ways I could never conceive of or deliver. Something about that physicality both inspires and indimidates me. But, that is another lesson for another day . . .

So in my world, we’d all have heroes. Some perfect, some flawed, but all giving us hope and inspiring us to be the best we can be.